At St George’s College Weybridge, often there is special emphasis placed on the idea of helping others, especially those less fortunate. One way in which many students do this is by working with refugees and displaced young people in the local community. Both the Kennedy Club and Teaching Programme at school enable students to do so.
The Kennedy Club has existed at St George’s since the 1960s; historically, it catered to those in the local community with learning difficulties. The model for the club consisted of teachers driving school minibuses to pick up the guests and bring them back to the school campus, where 6th form students would spend the evening socialising with them. However, like with many things, Covid stopped the Club in its tracks. The head of sixth form, Mr Carr, explained how upon the return to school post-lockdown, “we had the infrastructure for Kennedy Club, but no guests”. From here the idea of bringing refugees from the local community as the guests evolved. Now between 20-30 refugees, who are often living in hotels in the local area, come and take part in various social activities with students each Thursday evening. Across the 6thform, the Kennedy Club has 70 members who are on a rotor as to which weeks they attend, in order to keep numbers relatively equal. Lauren, a student who participates in the club, expressed that she “thoroughly enjoys socialising and forming friendships with the refugees her age, and it’s really great to see how much they enjoy their time”.
Meanwhile the teaching programme was started in 2020, during the first Covid-19 lockdown, by the head of sixth form, Mr Carr. With the Upper 6th at the time having had their A-levels cancelled, Mr Carr, who had been mentoring a Syrian refugee before the lockdown, founded the idea as something they could do with their newfound spare time. He expressed that within a mere 6 months “we started developing links with other refugee communities around Surrey, in addition to the charity ‘Elmbridge Can’” and from then “it really began to explode”.
Currently, the programme has 60 student volunteers in the Lower 6th, who give up an hour of their time, in the form of two 30-minute slots, each week to host Zoom conference calls with the refugee that they are assigned to work with. The refugees may be anywhere between 7 and 16 years old. Most student-volunteers work with textbooks provided by the school, to help tutor their refugee on their school curriculum, whether that be with English or Maths lessons. Not only does the scheme benefit the displaced young people who receive free tutoring, but it’s also rewarding for St George’s students to see the positive impact that they are having on the education and learning of these individuals. As put by Mr Carr, he’s hopeful that the scheme has “changed both the culture of the sixth form and the students’ outlook on life”. One student-volunteer, Jenna, stated that she, “really enjoys working with [her] refugee, and finds that it’s very fulfilling helping him improve his English language skills, whilst also forming a mentor-like relationship”, and this is a sentiment shared by many of the volunteering students.
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